Why Wear Abort73?

There's a crucial connection between Abort73 shirts and Abort73.com.

There’s nothing particularly unique about “pro-life” T-shirts. You'll find thousands of them listed on Google. Some of them look great; others look... less great. But almost all of them share one thing in common. They express an opinion, without providing much in the way of facts. How could they? The evidence in the case against abortion is too vast to be adequately communicated on a few square inches of fabric.

T-shirts are great for slogans, but slogans don’t prove anything – and until we prove that abortion is immoral and unjust, nothing will ever change. That’s why Abort73 has adopted a decidedly unconventional approach for our T-shirts. Instead of expecting a T-shirt to do the educating (something it’s not much good at), Abort73 shirts point people to a free, almost universally-accessible resource where they actually can be educated.

The Purpose – Every shirt we produce has one simple goal in mind: get people to Abort73.com. Why? Because the Abort73 website does things that T-shirts can't. It takes people past the mere expression of opinion and straight to the evidence which compels that opinion. Websites have the capacity to educate in ways that not even books or films can duplicate – let alone a T-shirt!

So why do we bother with T-shirts at all? Because T-shirts do things that websites can't! They walk the streets. They get on busses. They sit in classrooms. T-shirts have a built in audience and don't require the consent of those who view them. The relationship between the Abort73 shirts and the Abort73 website is an extremely strategic one. The T-shirts, without the website, would be useless, and the website, without the T-shirts, would be largely ignored. They need each other.

The Process – Pointing to the website is the big-picture connection, but perhaps you've noticed that the Abort73 shirts themselves can come off a bit confusing. They certainly don't do a very good job spelling out what Abort73 is all about. None of them say things like, "Free Abortion Info," or, "Learn More About Abortion Here." Wouldn't those kinds of messages be more clear? Yes. But would they be more effective? Probably not.

Very few people have a natural inclination to learn more about abortion. It's as taboo a topic as you'll find and carries all sorts of baggage and misconceptions. Openly advertising an abortion-related website would generate a whole lot of the exact same response: "Thanks, but no thanks." If someone is already interested in learning more about abortion, they don't need a T-shirt. They just need a keyboard. Lord willing, they'll find us on their own. For everyone else, we need to come in the back door, so to speak. Society isn't taking the initiative to better educate itself about abortion, and so we've got to be creative in the ways we reach it. To enact widespread cultural change, we must be able to engage those who, intentionally or not, have no interest in questioning the ethics of abortion.

How do Abort73 shirts do that? By not giving away too much on the front-end. Provocative but ambiguous phrasing and an intentionally vague URL help ensure that pre-existing biases don’t prevent someone from logging on. Our shirt slogans make sense once you know the context of the website, but until then they often leave people scratching their heads. That's okay. Curiosity is a powerful draw, and there is a very easy way for people to answer the question, "What is Abort73?!" Once they reach the website, the veil is lifted and they’re almost certain to find the case against abortion far more compelling than they ever imagined. Social-justice causes have never been so fashionable, and it doesn't take long to demonstrate that abortion is as crucial a social-justice cause as there is anywhere in the world.

The Place – Abort73 T-shirts can go just about anywhere that regular T-shirts can go and have an impact, but undoubtedly the most effective venue for these shirts is on high school and college campuses – where students consistently pass by the same people day after day. Here's how it plays out. You wear an Abort73 shirt to school one day. Lots of people see the shirt; a handful of them ask you about it or go to the website. A few days later you wear another Abort73 shirt. People see it a second time and a few more people are curious. The next week you wear one again, and again, and again. Week after week, month after month, students see "Abort73.com". Eventually their curiosity gets the best of them and significant numbers of students come to the site. Now imagine what happens when a couple more students (or 10 or 20) start wearing Abort73 to school on a regular basis. The repetition makes all the difference in the world and makes it possible for one student to influence an entire campus.

And it doesn't need to end with a T-shirt. We've got Abort73 pens, stickers, bags, bottles, cards, flyers, web graphics, and downloadable flyers that can all function in much the same way as the shirts. For better or worse, every T-shirt makes a statement, but most of those statements end with the shirt. With a little creativity, though, T-shirts can be a front door instead of a dead end – and that's what every Abort73 shirt sets out to be.